Take part in our online survey exploring models used for timetabling of the sciences at GCSE. The Royal Society of Chemistry is working with the Association for Science Education, Institute of Physics, Royal Society, Royal Society of Biology and Shift Learning to gather feedback from those who have a strong knowledge of how the sciences are ...
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Do you teach chemistry to A Level, Higher or Leaving Certificate students in the UK or Ireland? If you do, we need your help with a short survey about your students' degere choices. We're seeing a downward trend in applications to study chemistry at university that isn't fully explained by any change in entries to pre-degree qualifications. We'd like ...
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As a professional body, we encourage all of our members to develop their technical and professional skills by undertaking continuing professional development (CPD). This can take many forms including formal, structured training courses. To help our members decide on valuable and appropriate training for their needs, we started a programme to ...
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Free Tech 4 Teachers is a popular, and frequently-updated, blog that does exactly what it says on the tin. As every teacher knows free (or at least cheap, robust, powerful, and simple to use) technology is always in demand - which is why we hope Learn Chemistry will only grow and grow in popularity; all our resources are free to download and use.
And with Valentine's in mind, I thought I'd put a little sugar in your life, with the help of Learn Chemistry and Chemspider.

Talk Chemistry has reached its 500th member! We have been anxiously watching the member count creep its way to 500! So Well Done to Andres Tretiakov for being number 500 and winning himself a bag of RSC goodies!

Talk Chemistry came into being on the 22nd March 2010, with just a handful of early-adopting online members.

The course assumes no prior knowledge in the subject area or the wider sciences, but students must have good written English and baseline maths skills. If the UK is ever to become a leader in biofuels or plant-derived plastics, or become the 'Saudi Arabia of wind and wave power', we need more young people tackling the challenges of a post-oil world.

There are two slots for Living without oil, the first starting 18th Feb, and the second on the 12th May. If you, or anyone you know, wants to get an early head-start on this fascinating, and vitally important, subject, register via the YASS course page.

To get those budding post-oil scientists and policymakers started, here's a little inspiration.

Augmented reality and chemistry. A perfect match, you might say, given the difficulty many have visualising chemical structures and mechanisms.

Augmented reality, if you're not yet au fait, is making computer graphics or information appear in real-time over live video. It has hitherto generally been used for some mobile phone information tools, such as Layar, or as a toy. Kids can bring their plastic Avatar toys to life with a webcam and a a piece of card printed with a special two-dimensional bar code.

I see lots of potential for this sort of thing, but if anyone knows of other chemistry augmented reality tools out there, speak up. I don't doubt that there's a lot more out there.

Spoonholtz Productions (the people behind this rather fancy tool) produce molecule visualisation cards free to download and use. If anyone has success using these in class with real students, let us know.

Learn Chemistry is out there. It's roaming the internet, free and wild. But now begins the interesting part - where we hone and revise and tweak our one-stop-shop for chemistry education.

With that in mind, I'm pleased to report on two new developments.

First, we are adding loads of resources. At BETT and ASE we said we would continue to add chemistry education handouts, worksheets, videos, podcasts, interactive resources, and more. We plan to have uploaded close to double the launch list of (non-substance) resources by the spring.

Second, we're responding to feedback and testing. We're improving the way search results are displayed; when our new algorithm goes live (very soon) search results will be ordered irrespective of resource type, allowing the most relevant and highest-quality resources to appear first.

There'll be more improvements to come, and we hope you'll continue to tell us how you want the RSC's Learn Chemistry to look, feel, and work.

The number training to teach chemistry has risen 35% on the 2010 figure. This is great news. Even better, the calibre of primary and secondary teacher trainees has improved - more now have upper second or better degrees.